


you don’t have to be a ghost here amongst the living (you are flesh and bone and you deserve to be loved)

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Declarations Of Love, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, Gunshot Wounds, Hospitals, Romance, Survivor Guilt, not Lincoln friendly, skoulsonfest2k16redux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 17:04:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7540834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daisy is tired of being a survivor. </p>
<p>Written for the Skoulson RomFest 2k16 Redux - prompt: survivor(s)</p>
            </blockquote>





	you don’t have to be a ghost here amongst the living (you are flesh and bone and you deserve to be loved)

He’s going to die in a dirty alleyway and it’s her fault and her hands are too small and _stupid_ and they can’t stop the blood coming from his wound and for all her powers she is still too weak, too puny, to stop something like this.

She is tired of this, Daisy thinks as she stares at her hands dyed red.

She run so that this wouldn’t happen anymore.

So that this could never happen to _him_ , because she survived losing the others, but this is the one thing she’s not sure she can survive, the one thing her curse of living on can’t swallow.

“Why did you follow me?” she asks, suddenly angry at him.

“I thought you might need help,” Coulson says, almost smug about it. “And you did.”

“Yeah, you saved my life…” she mutters.

“That was the idea.”

She didn’t want that. She doesn’t want anyone to die for her. She doesn’t want to survive. She doesn’t want people leaving her anymore - but Coulson didn’t leave. _She did_. And it didn’t make a difference. Coulson never leaves her. His not-leaving is pitiless, unbearable, too kind, exactly what she has wanted all her life, exactly what she can’t have.

She hasn’t cried in months, not since she left. She’s exhausted.

She is tired of people taking bullets for her sake.

“Lincoln warned me about this,” she says.

Coulson tries to sit up straighter, fails, falls harder into Daisy’s arms. He starts becoming smaller, weightless.

“Warned you?”

“When everything else around you gets destroyed then… it’s because of you, you are the cause.”

“Lincoln said that to you?” he asks. Daisy nods. He was talking about himself but she felt those words so deeply, more than she ever let him know. “That’s horrible,” Coulson says.

It’s a strange point to argue right now, but Coulson seems more upset by that than by the fact that he is bleeding out in some backstreet and it’s Daisy’s fault. Because it was always going to be Daisy’s fault (the hand he will never get back, that was her doing too).

It’s so exhausting being the one to cause all this destruction.

“I’m tired of being a survivor,” she tells Coulson, begging him, because if someone is going to stay when she asks, that’s Coulson. “Please, don’t leave me.”

Coulson lifts his hand, slowly, presumably painfully, and touches her face, her hair, caressing her and leaving little red traces like a reminder of his tenderness.

Daisy hasn’t cried in so long she’s not sure she remembers what to do, so, ashamed, she buries her face in Coulson’s chest as he closes his eyes.

_This is what you do_ , she reminds herself.

“Please…” Daisy says against his shirt. “Don’t leave me alone.”

 

+

 

He wakes up in a nice, colorless daze that he identifies as the painkillers. His wound hurts, but in a faraway sense he still doesn’t have to deal with for a couple of hours just yet.

He looks up and there’s Daisy, pale and smiling at him.

He knows he should probably be dead, but that’s not the first time this happens to him. He has learned not to let it bother him too much, or at least to make the most of the extra time he’s been given. And at some point he realized that had something to do with the young woman sitting by his side right now.

“How are you feeling?” she asks.

Coulson doesn’t reply, he merely nods to let her know he’s fine. He wonders about stupid details like what happened to his clothes, or why does Daisy’s hair look wet, like she had to wash it at some point between him almost dying and now. He’s not sure how much time has passed, but he thinks it’s not too bad.

“Look, we match,” Daisy says, gesturing towards the IV.

Coulson takes a moment to realize what she is talking about.

“Daisy… why are you giving me your blood?”

“You’re in an underground Inhuman hospital,” she explains. “And we don’t have that many resources to spare. So I offered.”

He looks around him.

It’s like a regular hospital room, but the equipment seems fifteen years out of date, or fifteen years overused. It makes sense. And it’s not the first time Daisy implies there’s a whole underground community of Inhumans trying to weather the storm on their own terms.

“Hey. We saved each other,” Daisy says out loud, in an awed voice, as she looks at the blood travel to Coulson’s body.

Daisy looks different. Nothing like the woman crying against his chest in a dirty alleyway. Other than the understandable paleness she looks well, even radiant.

“An underground hospital for Inhumans, uh? I’m impressed.”

And grateful. So damn much. Whatever happened it’s clear Daisy and the doctors here have saved his life.

“There are more like this,” she tells him. “There’s one even in Hell’s Kitchen if you can imagine. I hope you don’t mind I brought you here.” He shakes his head and Daisy’s expression becomes serious. “I wanted to stay with you as long as it took for you to recover, but in a regular hospital… I couldn’t have risked it.”

He feels guilty that he has caused so much trouble, but touched that she wanted to stay with him. He would have done the same.

“I’m sorry I didn’t listen when you said not to follow,” he tells her. “I’m sorry I’ve not been listening.”

“I was afraid I’d gotten you killed, today,” she says, her voice shaking a bit with the possibility. Then she tilts her head and smiles a bit, and looks impressed. “But it turned out okay, after all.”

“Don’t forget it, I’m a survivor too,” he says, and he runs his fingers across his chest, pressing down until he feels his scar, until he’s sure Daisy knows he’s touching it.

“That will come in handy,” Daisy says. Coulson cranes his neck over the pillow, trying to move closer, but it’s a bit too painful yet. She explains. “This collaboration thing we’ve been having… I think it should be permanent.”

"I think that's... a great idea," he tells her, steadying his voice so he doesn't sound too eager, so Daisy doesn't have to feel pressured if she's not ready to work with a team again.

“I’m tired of being alone,” she confesses.

He can only begin to imagine how these past eight months must have been for her, not just being in the run, but not having contact with anyone who knew her, going weeks and weeks without hearing a friendly voice.

“I’d like to help with that,” Coulson tells her, not sure what he’s really offering, but willing to offer _anything_.

He starts by offering his hand - the best he can, considering he is injured in a hospital bed. Daisy takes it, carefully grazing the pads of her fingers across his palm before wrapping her hand around his knuckle. It’s not the first time they’ve touched after all these months - her hands held him trying to stop the bleeding mere hours ago - but it _feels_ like the first time they touch after all these months.

Daisy starts talking in a small, open voice.

“I’ve felt alone all my life, until I met…” 

She drops her head. Coulson’s heart breaks for her.

“I know it hurts, but it will get better,” he tells her, hoping. “You’ll find someone.”

Daisy lifts her head and looks at him in confusion for a moment. Coulson fears he might have offended her, telling her she’ll eventually get over and love again. That’s probably not what she wanted to hear. He’s failed her again.

“No, I didn’t mean-” she stops and lets out a nervous chuckle. “I meant _you_. I was trying to…”

With her free hands she makes a gesture between them, _about them_.

“Oh.”

“Thanks for ruining the moment,” she says.

“I’m sorry.”

She gives him a soft smile, full of fondness Coulson is pretty sure he doesn’t deserve. He doesn’t deserve any of this. Being alive. Daisy.

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” she says, conciliatory.

I’m more than okay now, he thinks.

“Me too,” he says.

“And I know we have a million things to talk about and we should probably take it slow but… can we skip to the part where we make out in a hospital room?”

Coulson widens his eyes at her.

“I’m really glad I didn’t die on that alleyway,” he tells her.


End file.
